Roll up, roll up. Get yer DMP update here!

Last month saw a busy Active DMPs and Domain Repositories Interest Groups joint session at the RDA Plenary in Montreal. Two new working groups have been launched to advance work in this area: one on developing Common Standards for DMPs and another on Exposing DMPs. In addition, there are multiple active projects in this space including ezDMP, the University of Queensland’s Data Management Records approach, FAIRsharing and our own DMPRoadmap project. All the slides and notes from the RDA session are available from the link above if you want to find out more. The working groups are just starting to get underway too, so please review their plans and contribute if you can.

We’ve been progressing the machine-actionable DMP agenda through the DMPRoadmap team too. With support from an RDA Europe collaboration award, we integrated the disciplinary Metadata Standards Directory (MSD) into the tool. Template administrators can choose the MSD as an answer format for metadata questions so users can browse the directory from within the tool. We’d love your feedback on this – both admins trialling it on templates and end users selecting standards. Can you find relevant standards easily? Is the functionality intuitive? Are there other features or additions you would like to see? Please try it out at https://dmponline-test.dcc.ac.uk and let us know.

Integrating the MSD is just one small step on the path to improving the DMP experience. We also plan to surface other registries, such as FAIRsharing and re3data, to recommend appropriate standards and services. Experimentation in this area will also aim to facilitate the exchange of information between systems and alert services to data in the pipeline. The DMPTool team have just received a 2-year NSF EAGER grant to address these bigger aims! The work plan includes pilot projects with the Biological and Chemical Oceanographic Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) at Woods Hole, MA and understanding the institutional workflow in collaboration with Purdue and others. Find out more on the DMPTool blog; additional details forthcoming as we refine the work plan.

The next stop for us is FORCE2017 in Berlin next week. We’ll be running a session on 10 Simple Rules for Active DMPs on Friday morning (27 Oct) in collaboration with the FAIR DMP group. The session will introduce participants to the concepts of FAIR and machine-actionable DMPs and then build community consensus around common goals and definitions. We’ve been working on a draft that we’ll share and iterate on at the meeting. Join us there if you can!

We’re also looking forward to the International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC) in Barcelona next February. The call for papers is out now and closes later this month. Last year we outlined ideas for Next-Generation DMPs (here) and hosted a workshop that resulted in this white paper with community-generated use cases for machine-actionable DMPs. Thanks again to all those who contributed to defining these preliminary requirements for the work now being addressed by us and the RDA working groups. IDCC is a great opportunity to get international input on your ideas so share what you’ve been working on and join us in Barcelona!